Spring Branch ISD Featured News

Redesign Inspires Life Lessons
 

 

The first-grade classrooms in Sherwood Elementary were unusually quiet earlier this week as students and educators took to the road for an immersive exploration of community.

 
The trip was part of an interdisciplinary unit, titled “What’s my role in the community?” The unit focuses on combining grade-level academic areas of study into one shared activity.
 
Sherwood First-Graders stopped at several key locations on their tour, including the Hunter’s Creek Mayor’s Office, the Villages Fire Department, and the Spring Branch ISD Administration Building.
 
Staff at each location took time to share their role, information about their career pathway, and insights about the critical work their organization plays in the broader community.
 
A singular question inspired the entire experience. That question was the result of Sherwood’s active pursuit this school year of something called School Redesign.
 
Redesign aims to create better learning environments and outcomes for kids, and it involves the entire community. As part of the Redesign process, schools participate in a discovery process within their community to identify key areas of need.
 
Once those areas are identified, the school creates signature experiences to transform outcomes for students and adults in those areas. Transformations are unique to each school community and can be large or small based on the needs of the students, families, educators, and neighborhood school community.
 
Project-based learning, community time, and student-led goal setting are a few examples of transformations some SBISD school have adopted in the redeisgn process.
 

Last year, SBISD celebrated 10 schools in redesign. This year 14 schools are taking on the opportunity.

Learn more about School Redesign in SBISD here.

 
 
 

 

Learning from Sherwood’s redesign work shaped the purpose and planning of the trip as well as the entire week’s lesson.

 
“Our goal was to create context, meaning, and memory for our children as part of an interdisciplinary unit,” said school Principal Stefanie Spencer.
The approach is one of three key experiences that form the school’s unique signature experiences: interdisciplinary units, community circles, and flexing within/across grade levels.
 
“Human beings learn best when they are given context, relevancy, and engagement. The real world experience is about integrated disciplines. Let’s learn that way, too,” said Principal Spencer when reflecting on the day's experience.
 
Educators focused on taking time to engage students before and after each stop to join in a conversation about the world around them and what they saw.
 
Lessons continued when students returned to class and welcomed community guest speakers to close out the week’s activities.
 
“To see our students learn and to see other adults and district staff get excited about it, it was invigorating,” said Spencer.

 

For more information about Spring Branch ISD’s strategic plan and school redesign, visit our Strategic Planning website.

 
 
 
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